SEEDS STUDY

Busting the myth of diversity in the EU seed market

This study shows how the seed market in the European Union is currently experiencing an increasingly high level

of concentration. In the EU institutional debate, industry and the European Commission’s DG SANCO (health and

consumer affairs, the service of the European Commission leading on this dossier) often argue that the EU seed

sector does not suffer from high concentration, and involves some 7000 small and medium sized companies.

This study will show that contrary to these claims, the largest global seed companies are dominating the EU

market, and among them three are EU based. The idea of an “EU market” as such can be considered as rather

an abstraction, as it is a de facto globalised market made up of smaller markets delimited by EU Member

State (MS), or by crop species or groups of crop species (e.g. maize, grain, vegetables, etc), with mergers and

acquisitions of those sub-markets occurring between the giants.

There is little transparency in the sector, as data and information on the biggest companies in the sector

is considered to be commercially sensitive, and so it is difficult to obtain. As there are no freely available,

independently verifiable figures, the Commission could be forgiven for peddling the myth of the sector lobby,

ESA (European Seed association), as theirs is the only meta-data available. Since the Commission published

the proposal for the new seed marketing legislation on May 2013

this has been one of the most controversial

issues:

During the European Parliament’s committee on agriculture and rural development (COM AGRI) meeting on 30th

September 2013, a representative of the Commission stated that there are figures confirming that 30% of the

total European seed market value is covered by multinational seed corporations, and that the rest of the market

is covered by small and medium enterprises. This statement has never officially been backed up by any studies

or data: indeed, confidential industry sources paint a different picture, stating that in Europe (including Turkey),

the top 5 companies

control more than 50% of the market.

In a subsequent meeting of the European Parliament’s COM AGRI on 26th November 2013

, the Commission

stated that the high number of the small and medium enterprises operating in the EU seed sector was indicative

of a low-concentration market.

CONCENTRATION OF MARKET POWER IN THE EU SEED MARKET